To succeed in government relations, you must first begin with a strong and sound strategy. You may have a number of goals you want to achieve or issues you want to see go away, but unless you have a strong strategic plan, you could potentially find your objectives in conflict, and your chances of success erased.
The first step is a strategic plan. It differs from an internal corporate strategic plan because this plan is tailored to achieving success in government. It must embrace the goals you want to achieve, both those that you seek as well as those you want to stop from happening, and then they need to be prioritized. Evaluations need to be made about whether these are goals you seek to achieve alone or if you have partners to help, along with a sizing up of what you face in opposition. Timing needs to be incorporated, mapping backward to allow sufficient time for government to act, allowing for all the delays that could happen.
Strategic communications are next. You need to take your goals and craft the messaging around them, succinct enough to draw interest in a meeting to the point where they are substantial enough that they can be used to craft legislation or regulations. In between, they must build a case, showing why government needs this outcome, how it can benefit from it and why your approach is the one that clearly is the best.
To succeed in Albany, you must have strength in your community back home. Community relations are so vitally important because how you are perceived by the elected officials that represent you is largely a reflection of how the community as a whole perceives you. If they embrace you, you have an important ally in achieving your goals. If they resist you, you will encounter difficulties because if there are more of them than there are you, and blocks of voters matter greatly to elected officials and you will be on the wrong side of that math.
Pulling together all these tools with a strong government relations strategy is crucial to achieve success. We know the ways and means for you to achieve your ends.